Nothin’ ‘Bout God Makes Sense
I’ve always liked the idea of paradoxes. AKA: contradictions, anomalies, and oxymorons that seem false but really are true. It was sometime in middle or high school when I learned the term, but once introduced to the concept, I began noticing examples of it everywhere. There’s the classic dismissal of a friend’s correction: “same difference.” There’s the gentle prodding from a teacher to the student who so clearly doesn’t know the answer: take an “educated guess.” There’s what unfortunately happened to much of our family’s ice cream because we’d leave 3-4 cartons uneaten at once: “freezer burn.”
The list goes on and on. As I aged, I began to realize, not only did I loved the play on words, but I was even more fascinated by the 3-D-ness of understanding these paradoxes offered that many of the other words we used on the daily did not. They seemed to hold the good with the bad, the small with the large, and concrete with something also real but abstract. I remember first hearing these lines from a song by LeAnn Rimes.
Like the lights of Las Vegas glowin' out of the sand
A jumbo shrimp or a baby grand
How you touch my heart when you hold my hand
Oh, nothin' 'bout love makes sense
Cheesy? Yes. True? Absolutely. Because as a teenager (as continues to remain true over a decade later) nothin’ ‘bout love makes sense. It is the greatest gift full of the most baffling paradoxes. But aren’t all the things that really matter this way? Isn’t even the greatest apologetic of the Christian faith the fact that it doesn’t make sense? That it’s filled with true contradictions and unshakeable uncertainties? Isn’t faith without paradoxes simply intellect?
I love the Robert Johnson quote that Matthew McConaughey includes in his book, Greenlights:
“The capacity for paradox is the measure of spiritual strength and surest sign of maturity.”
Another guy who knew this and wanted us to know it too was Jesus. In what may as well have been his inaugural address at the start of his earthly ministry (AKA: The Sermon on the Mount), Jesus says:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
-Matthew 5:3-5
And the list goes on and on. Do these things make sense to us? No. Are they true in ways too complex for us to put in a pretty box? Yes. Was the One speaking actually fully God and fully man? Yes. Does that make these statements even more believable to me because if they’re not true, then they’re a ridiculous lie to have sustained for 2,000 years? For sure.
As I continue to live life, to rejoice and suffer, to triumph and lose, the more I realize a life without paradoxes isn’t a life at all. Life is at its very core, bittersweet. The most devastating pain I’ve ever felt was like a smelling salt waking me to an even greater capacity for joy. It’s crazy, but it’s true!
The greatest loves you have will hurt the worst when they go. The gravest sins you fight will offer your richest experiences of grace. Your most devastating failures can fuel your later successes. And the God who lets you fall down is the One who will lift you higher than you can ever imagine.
Scripture tells us these things and gives many more promises that, though they seem to contradict themselves in our finite minds, they are 100% true in his eternal Kingdom. We will never understand fully. And get that out of your head because the Lord doesn’t expect us to. Paul Tripp, author of Good Morning Mercies, offers this sigh of relief for times when we feel frustrated or confused by God’s word:
“He understands all the things that confuse you the most Not only are your mysteries not mysterious to him, but he is in complete charge of all that is mysterious to you and me.”
The Kingdom life is never 2-dimensional. It will never fit a box because if it did, it wouldn’t be worth believing in. A God who makes sense isn’t the kind I want to follow because it means He doesn’t have the power I need him to have to save me. Yet this life full of paradoxes is hard. It’s seldom clear and often not what we want it to be. But 10/10 I’d rather take tough and abundant, confusing and soul saving, than easy and two-dimensional, explainable yet self-reliant. Wouldn’t you?